378,465 research outputs found
A DMAIC Framework for Improving Software Quality in Organizations: Case Study at RK Company
Managing quality is a vital aspect in software development world, especially in the current business competition for fast delivery of feature rich products with high quality. For an organization to meet its intended level of excellence in order to ensure its success, a culture of quality should be built where every individual is responsible of quality and not just the software testing team. However, delivering software products with very few bugs is a challenging constraint that is usually sacrificed in order for a company to meet other management constraints such as cost, scope and scheduling.
The purpose of this thesis is to apply six sigma DMAIC framework on 'RK’ company (name anonymized) in order to help software organizations focus on improving the quality of their software products. Different phases of DMAIC methodology are applied to one of the largest software applications for ‘RK’ company where critical to quality aspects were identified, production bugs were classified and measured, the causes of the large number of production bugs were specified leading to different improvement suggestions. Several metrics were proposed to help ‘RK’ company control its software development process to ensure the success of the project under study
Process capability assessments in small development firms
[Abstract}: Assessment-based Software Process Improvement (SPI) programs such as the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Bootstrap, and SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504) are based on formal frameworks and promote the use of systematic processes and management practices for software development. These approaches identify best practices for the management of software development and when applied, enable organizations to understand, control and improve development processes. The purpose of a SPI assessment is to compare the current processes used in an organization with a list of recommended or ‘best’ practices.
This research investigates the adoption of SPI initiatives by four small software development firms. These four firms participated in a process improvement program which was sponsored by Software Engineering Australia (SEA) (Queensland). The assessment method was based on SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504) and included an initial assessment, recommendations, and a follow-up meeting. For each firm, before and after snapshots are provided of the capability as assessed on eight processes. The discussion which follows summarizes the improvements realized and considers the critical success factors relating to SPI adoption for small firms
Software Development Standard and Software Engineering Practice: A Case Study of Bangladesh
Improving software process to achieve high quality in a software development
organization is the key factor to success. Bangladeshi software firms have not
experienced much in this particular area in comparison to other countries. The
ISO 9001 and CMM standard has become a basic part of software development. The
main objectives of our study are: 1) To understand the software development
process uses by the software developer firms in Bangladesh 2) To identify the
development practices based on established quality standard and 3) To establish
a standardized and coherent process for the development of software for a
specific project. It is revealed from this research that software industries of
Bangladesh are lacking in target set for software process and improvement,
involvement of quality control activities, and standardize business expertise
practice. This paper investigates the Bangladeshi software industry in the
light of the above challenges.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 11 table
Technical Debt Prioritization: State of the Art. A Systematic Literature Review
Background. Software companies need to manage and refactor Technical Debt
issues. Therefore, it is necessary to understand if and when refactoring
Technical Debt should be prioritized with respect to developing features or
fixing bugs. Objective. The goal of this study is to investigate the existing
body of knowledge in software engineering to understand what Technical Debt
prioritization approaches have been proposed in research and industry. Method.
We conducted a Systematic Literature Review among 384 unique papers published
until 2018, following a consolidated methodology applied in Software
Engineering. We included 38 primary studies. Results. Different approaches have
been proposed for Technical Debt prioritization, all having different goals and
optimizing on different criteria. The proposed measures capture only a small
part of the plethora of factors used to prioritize Technical Debt qualitatively
in practice. We report an impact map of such factors. However, there is a lack
of empirical and validated set of tools. Conclusion. We observed that technical
Debt prioritization research is preliminary and there is no consensus on what
are the important factors and how to measure them. Consequently, we cannot
consider current research conclusive and in this paper, we outline different
directions for necessary future investigations
Integrating automated support for a software management cycle into the TAME system
Software managers are interested in the quantitative management of software quality, cost and progress. An integrated software management methodology, which can be applied throughout the software life cycle for any number purposes, is required. The TAME (Tailoring A Measurement Environment) methodology is based on the improvement paradigm and the goal/question/metric (GQM) paradigm. This methodology helps generate a software engineering process and measurement environment based on the project characteristics. The SQMAR (software quality measurement and assurance technology) is a software quality metric system and methodology applied to the development processes. It is based on the feed forward control principle. Quality target setting is carried out before the plan-do-check-action activities are performed. These methodologies are integrated to realize goal oriented measurement, process control and visual management. A metric setting procedure based on the GQM paradigm, a management system called the software management cycle (SMC), and its application to a case study based on NASA/SEL data are discussed. The expected effects of SMC are quality improvement, managerial cost reduction, accumulation and reuse of experience, and a highly visual management reporting system
Myths and Realities about Online Forums in Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Study
The use of free and open source software (OSS) is gaining momentum due to the
ever increasing availability and use of the Internet. Organizations are also
now adopting open source software, despite some reservations, in particular
regarding the provision and availability of support. Some of the biggest
concerns about free and open source software are post release software defects
and their rectification, management of dynamic requirements and support to the
users. A common belief is that there is no appropriate support available for
this class of software. A contradictory argument is that due to the active
involvement of Internet users in online forums, there is in fact a large
resource available that communicates and manages the provision of support. The
research model of this empirical investigation examines the evidence available
to assess whether this commonly held belief is based on facts given the current
developments in OSS or simply a myth, which has developed around OSS
development. We analyzed a dataset consisting of 1880 open source software
projects covering a broad range of categories in this investigation. The
results show that online forums play a significant role in managing software
defects, implementation of new requirements and providing support to the users
in open source software and have become a major source of assistance in
maintenance of the open source projects
Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program
Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the
arrival of agile development methods. While intended for small, self-managing
teams, these methods are increasingly used also for large development programs.
A major challenge in programs is to coordinate the work of many teams, due to
high uncertainty in tasks, a high degree of interdependence between tasks and
because of the large number of people involved. This revelatory case study
focuses on how knowledge work is coordinated in large-scale agile development
programs by providing a rich description of the coordination practices used and
how these practices change over time in a four year development program with 12
development teams. The main findings highlight the role of coordination modes
based on feedback, the use of a number of mechanisms far beyond what is
described in practitioner advice, and finally how coordination practices change
over time. The findings are important to improve the outcome of large
knowledge-based development programs by tailoring coordination practices to
needs and ensuring adjustment over time.Comment: To appear in Project Management Journa
Using Counts as Heuristics for the Analysis of Static Models
The upstream activities of software development are often viewed as both the most
important, in terms of cost, and the yet the least understood, and most problematic, particularly in terms of satisfying customer requirements. Business process modelling is
one solution that is being increasingly used in conjunction with traditional software
development, often feeding in to requirements and analysis activities. In addition,
research in Systems Engineering for Business Process Change, highlights the importance
of modelling business processes in evolving and maintaining the legacy systems that
support those processes. However, the major use of business process modelling, is to
attempt to restructure the business process, in order to improve some given aspect, e.g.,
cost or time. This restructuring may be seen either as separate activity or as a pre-cursor
to the development of systems to support the new or improved process. Hence, the
analysis of these business models is vital to the improvement of the process, and as a
consequence to the development of supporting software systems. Supporting this analysis
is the focus of this paper.
Business processes are typically described with static (diagrammatic) models. This paper
proposes the use of measures (counts) to aid analysis and comparison of these static
process descriptions. The proposition is illustrated by showing how measures can be
applied to a commonly used process-modelling notation, Role Activity Diagrams (RADs).
Heuristics for RADs are described and measures suggested which support those
heuristics. An example process is used to show how a coupling measure can be used to
highlight features in RADs useful to the process modeller.
To fully illustrate the proposition the paper describes and applies a framework for the
theoretical validation of the coupling measure. An empirical evaluation follows. This is
illustrated by two case studies; the first based on the bidding process of a large
telecommunications systems supplier, and the second a study of ten prototyping processes
across a number of organisations.
These studies found that roles of the same type exhibited similar levels of coupling across
processes. Where roles did not adhere to tentative threshold values, further investigation
revealed unusual circumstances or hidden behaviour. Notably, study of the prototyping
roles, which exhibited the greatest variation in coupling, found that coupling was highly
correlated with the size of the development team. This suggests that prototyping in large
projects had a different process to that for small projects, using more mechanisms for
communication. Hence, the empirical studies support the view that counts (measures)
may be useful in the analysis of static process models
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